LANGUAG

E
CHANGE
 Definition of
Language
Change
How does
Language
change and its
examples
Why does
Language
change?
 - Is considered to be
a system of LANGUAGE
communicating with
other people using
sounds, symbols, and
words in expressing
a meaning, idea, or
thought.
• Every language has a •Languages change
history, and, as in the in all their aspects,
rest of human culture,
changes are
in their
constantly taking • pronunciation,
place in the course of word forms, syntax,
the learned and word meanings
transmission of a
(semantic change).
language from one
generation to another.
 LANGUAGE CHANGE

• is the phenomenon by which permanent

alterations are made in the features and the use of
a language over time. Certain changes may be
introduced at first as an optional rule by any
speaker of the language and spread gradually in a
speech community. New vocabulary is invented
from another language.
 HOW

DOES

LANGUAGE

CHANGE ?
 How does language change?

Changes through
time Assimilation

Changes through
geographical
movement
 1. CHANGES
In the structural aspects of
spoken language, their
THROUGH
pronunciation and TIME
grammar, and in
vocabulary less closely
involved in rapid cultural
movement, the processes
of linguistic change are
best observed by
comparing written records
of a language over
Example:
This is most readily seen by English speakers
through setting side by side present-day English
texts with 18th-century English, the English of
the Authorized Version of the Bible,
Shakespearean English, Chaucer’s English, and
the varieties of Old English (Anglo-Saxon) that
survive in written form.
 The linguistic change is
occurring in the 2. CHANGES THROUGH
GEOGRAPHICAL
transmission of language MOVEMENT
from one generation to
another. But other factors
contribute to the
historical development of
languages and determine
the spread of a language
family over the world’s
surface.
Example:

Population movements naturally play a large part,

and movements of peoples in prehistoric times
carried the Indo-European languages from a
relatively restricted area into most of Europe and
into northern India, Persia, and Armenia. The
spread of the Indo-European languages resulted, in
the main, from the imposition of the languages on
the earlier populations of the territories occupied.
 3. ASSIMILATION
•Language changes by children acquiring
knowledge. Each child constructs a personal
grammar on his/her own, which he/she derives
from a diverse linguistic input. This may result
to simplification or over-generalization of rules.
By this, there is a process of ease articulation, in
which one sound influences the articulation of
the nearby sound.
EXAMPLE:
•During the last 100 years or so, there have
been four major camps when it comes to
language change. The first is
“structuralists”, then “typologists”, who see
internal motivations for change in the
language. The other are “sociolinguists”,
who see external / social motivations for
change.
WHY DOES LANGUAGE CHANGE
• STUCTURALISM
• TYPOLOGIES
• SOCIOLINGUISTICS

WHY DOES
LANGUAGE
CHANGE?
 STRUCTURALISM
• structuralism, in linguistics, any one of
several schools of 20th-century linguistics
committed to the structuralist principle that a
language is a self-contained relational structure,
the elements of which derive their existence and
their value from their distribution and
oppositions in texts or discourse.
•To give a concrete example, standard Spanish
and Puerto Rico, the subject pronoun is almost
obligatory (as it is in English), to compensate
for the loss of the verb ending, and to let us
know who we’re talking about. (Something
similar happened in English between about
1000 and 1500 AD).
 TYPOLOGY
• In fulfilling the requirements of open-ended
creativity imposed on language by human
beings, grammatical structure has things in
common in all known languages, particularly at
the deeper levels of grammar. All known
languages have words or wordlike elements
combined in accordance with rules into
sentences.
e.g.,
• The sun set and we returned home.
When the sun set, we returned home.
• Joan was playing tennis and Joan twisted her
ankle.
• Joan, who was playing tennis, twisted her ankle.
or
She was playing tennis, Joan twisted her ankle.
 SOCIOLINGUISTICS
• Is the study of the sociological aspects of
language. The discipline concerns itself with the
part language plays in maintaining the social
roles in a community. Sociolinguists attempt to
isolate those linguistic features that are used in
particular situations and that mark the various
social relationships among the participants and
the significant elements of the situation.
• For example, an American English speaker may
use such forms as “He don’t know nothing” or
“He doesn’t know anything,” depending on such
considerations as his level of education, race,
social class or consciousness, or the effect he
wishes to produce on the person he is
addressing. In some languages, such as
Japanese, there is an intricate system of
linguistic forms that indicate the social
relationship of the speaker to the hearer.